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Certainly Halo’s cut-scenes were, to me, more jaw-dropping, more lifelike.

But really, these are two games that have pushed the limits of console graphics (and they can only be fairly compared on the Xbox 360 since Halo 4 did not release on PC and won’t be coming to Wii U either) and shown us that despite the age of the hardware, truly remarkable things can still be achieved.

Alec Meer, whose humorous, imagistic prose never ceases to impress me, has a terrific passage on these beautiful, wasted terrains. Forgive me the long quotation, but it (and the rest of his review of the game) is well worth a read:

There’s this oft-repeated claim that Call of Duty games’ singleplayer are mere throwaway nothings, simply box-ticking to help encourage more punters into the annual $60 purchase of an ever-more refined but never truly changed multiplayer mode. I see what CODBLOPS does with its single player, the magnitude of what it builds even if it all as surface, and I know that claim is dead wrong. Every time this game switches to a new location, I feel as though I’ve just watched a few million dollars burn away on my screen. Only a fraction of what was built for singleplayer will appear in multiplayer: these 8-10 hours of breathless blockbuster frenzy were clearly a huge and expensive project, not a routine one.

Amazing things have been made, and the people who crafted these scenes deserve our respect. But then I find all I can do within these scenes is run forward in a more-or-less straight line while shooting a machine gun I can’t even remember the name of. It feels like absurd wastage, so much built and then only used as hoardings along the side of Black Ops 2′s ever-exploding road. At one point, having just shown off a breathtaking fully-modelled aerial view the aforementioned future mega-resort, the game then immediately drags you into the boring, pop-up baddie-filled maintenance tunnels underneath it, so your view of this awesome structure lasts mere seconds. I feel sad that this grand building was created but then used only in cameo.

Then, even more sadly, I think of all those other, less bullet-crazed games that could do so many things with vast, awe-inspiring environments like these, not simply pen the player into an alley. They will never have even a fraction of it, of course, because they are not the world’s best-selling videogame series. Oh, for a game in the vein of Vampire Bloodlines or Deus Ex to have had the nightclub level that this does. It would have made it into a maze of conversations and challenges and strangeness, but all this does with its vast, multi-tier space and legions of gyrating bodies is have you walk up to a door at the other end. It’s like someone spending years designing and building the Colosseum but then just using it as a coffee shop.

There are so many little touches too, signs of a visual design team free to indulge themselves, creating deft micro-ideas that there’s every chance the vast majority of players won’t even notice through the storm of blood and bullets and blind fury. Much of the game is set in 2025, so during a scene in an airport approaching one of the many billboards for fragrances and watches sees the face of the man in them replaced by that of whoever’s looking at them – specifically, the character you control at that point, Commander David ‘Section’ Mason. Minority Report stuff, yeah, but I’m amazed that they stuck such a tiny thing in there, this little breathe of cleverness within a game that is consciously obnoxious and mindless in so many other ways. Similarly, a 2025 jeep has a tiny, self-updating HUD on the corner of its windscreen detailing its emmissions, MPG and that sort of thing – a deft little reflection of what car culture might have become after another decade of a half of climate change fear and technological evolution. You pretty much have to squint to see it, but it’s there because someone made it even though it has nothing to do with the running and shooting and running and shooting.

This is all so painfully true. The corridor in Black Ops 2 changes background scenery and we’re privy to one gorgeous view after another, but we’re still trapped in that corridor amidst the bullets and explosions. Many, many times playing through the campaign I wished I could indulge my nagging curiosity, strike off the beaten path just for a moment, find some new approach.

But this is never allowed. Its terrain is window-dressing in the service of a strictly scripted guided tour of a story. What a shame. Multiplayer avoids this by actually allowing you to approach each map however you please, but of course this contains its own confinements and limitations.

Call of Duty has the budget and the popularity to risk more. The innovations in the game’s multiplayer show how taking a risk can make a game much better and more fun. I don’t think an “open-world” Call of Duty is in order, but I do think it’s time the franchise abandoned this rigid approach to level building. Make levels more open, give players more choices and more ways to accomplish each mission, and stop holding our hands. Give us the tools we need to make our way through the game and then let us choose how we will utilize them. I mean, obviously players come here for the player-vs-player. And it’s by far the most challenging thing about these games. If players are coming for the challenge, why not give them what they want in the single-player also?

Would this be a departure from one of the defining features of the series? Absolutely. But it would be a welcome departure and an evolutionary step that would strengthen the gameplay and, perhaps, make some use of these magnificent environments. I have no doubt we will never see something like this in a Modern Warfare installment, but Black Ops 3…why not?

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That picture at the beginning of the article is from MW3 map called Erosion. It has nothing to do with Black Ops 2.

You lost all your credibility with me just by inserting that picture and confirmed your lack of knowledge about COD by providing a long quotation from another source. Dude, just play the game before you write an article about it. I just hope that’s the case and not because of laziness that you used that pic.

Actually I just grabbed the wrong screen by mistake. I’ve replaced it with another. But seriously, “lost all your credibility” is such a stupid thing to say. It gets tiresome. I’ve played the whole campaign, many many hours of the multiplayer and several hours of the zombie mode. So go take the condescending nonsense elsewhere.

Again, I have issues with your credibility. “I’ve played the whole campaign, many many hours of the multiplayer and several hours of the zombie mode.” How do you manage to play that much and not realize you put up the wrong screenshot? I’m surprised you didn’t put a screenshot of Mario!

Also, half of your article was material from another source That was the second reason why I felt you had lost your credibility with me. In addition, all COD campaigns are scripted. You should know this if you really played as much as you claim to have played. Looks like you took some of your writing point from an online COD ranting community.

If you can’t take the criticism then don’t write sloppy articles. Seems to me like you are being condescending by telling me to take my nonsense elsewhere. If it were nonsense, then why did you correct your mistake?

There’s Criticism and then there’s being a dick. I suggest you take Duke Nukem’s advice and not be one.

Unless you have a particular axe to grind with the author I don’t see how a formatting error, however egregious it appears to you, Invalidates all the other insightful and useful articles he’s written.

This is the fourth post I’ve written about Black Ops 2. You can read the others if you like. Out of the four it’s the only one in which I use a long block-quote. But really, I don’t care. Drive-by commenters acting all high and mighty are pretty low on my list of things to actually care about.

First, I wasn’t being a dick . I simply pointed out a mistake that was very obvious. Erik admitted, indirectly I may add, that my two main points were true but my comments were condescending nonsense. Kinda contradictory maybe? Just like calling me a “drive-by commenter” at the bottom of his list of things to actually care, yet takes the time to respond to my comment.

Second, the same way you are entitled to your opinion I am to my own. Should I decide to be a dick, then that is my problem and it should not concern you. My original comment was not directed towards you. Maybe you should not be the one to instruct me on forum etiquette.

“I never noticed myself but then I usually read articles, not just look at the pictures.” With that statement I conclude that you also own a playboy t-shirt that says “I only read the articles!”. The picture was front and center, so I don’t know how you could not have noticed the error. Do you even know what COD is??

Perhaps being frank, honest and polite has gone the way of the dinosaur. Hope you enjoy the “brownie points” you scored with the author.

Dude, I thought you were being an dick and then I called you on it. As for the suggestion that you only look at the pictures and didn’t read the ‘big boy’ words.

… sucks being condescended to, doesn’t it?

And if you think you were being polite in your post that started this, I suggest you go back consult whatever books on etiquette you claim to have read. Such claims have lost all credibility with me. Farewell. I shall not respond further on this topic. you may have the last word.

2. I never claimed to have read a book on forum etiquette. I just pointed out that you should probably not be the one to instruct me on forum etiquette. Big difference between the two. Seems to me that you can read and write, but have a problem comprehending what you read.

3. I don’t mind or care being condescended to. I pointed out that I was not being condescending. I only stated two flaws and offered suggestions. When I am wrong, I expect people to call me out on it. On the flip side, don’t make up things that I supposedly “read” or “said”. That is simply being dishonest and I do have a problem with that.